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OPEN | Blood And Ice

Civil Blood

I. News from the West

The story of why gets twisted and distorted between its departure from the Crags and its arrival in Northcliff Pass, but the town criers maintain consistency on a few points: Althea of House Jessamy, Duchess of Black Rock, has at last thrown down the gauntlet against the Duke of Cliffside, and has called on her vassals to rally their bannermen. It seems there will be war within the borders of Maireglenne for the first time in a hundred years.

Given the state of the roads leading through the pass, it is understandable that the news is a few weeks’ stale by the time armed soldiers sporting Duke Galein’s colours march (or gallop, if they are astride a horse) past the village walls and garrison themselves on the festival grounds. Anyone objecting to this new arrangement is encouraged by the soldiers to bring their objections to the garrison commander (who, rumor has it, personally oversees the flogging of objectors himself).

Like it or not, the regiment is here to stay, at least until they receive orders instructing them otherwise. On the bright side, the soldiers did the hard work of clearing the pass for the season; travel between Northcliff Pass and the city of Cliffside just got a heck of a lot easier this winter.

II. Cold Snap

And it’s highly likely that those orders will be as delayed as the news, for the regiment has hardly been within the city walls a week before the temperatures plunge to dangerous lows. This is not the seasonal frigidity accompanied by blustery blizzards that encourage snowball fights and a bit of ice fishing down by Sands Creek, but a cold so biting and bitter that any prolonged period spent outside in it runs the very real risk of hypothermia and death. This is the kind of cold that leaves the air clean and clear, with nothing to impede the watery white light of the sun for the few hours it spends above the horizon each day before setting again; it cuts the lungs when inhaled and bites straight through to the bone. Many of the village’s poor are brought within the sturdy walls of the Town Hall and the chapel, because the alternative is finding them frozen solid in the streets.

The silver lining to this development is bare indeed; avoiding the cold means that, for a time at least, the village residents and soldiers are too preoccupied hunkering down to endure the cold to be at cross purposes.

III. A Howl in the Night

On the third night of the deep freeze, an animal’s piercing howl shatters the oppressive silence that has settled over the village.

It’s not a wolf’s howl; it is far too shrill and keening, and comes from a great distance away, that much is clear. The few villagers brave enough to risk exposure to the cold will find nothing of immediate danger within the city walls--but should they lift their eyes and look to the gossamer clouds near the summit of Gods’ Reach, they will glimpse the dark silhouette of a massive winged beast circling the mountaintop in search of a safe place to roost.

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From within the wagon comes an alarmed sound somewhere between a caw and a chirrup; if it isn't Alvi, it's definitely not Tuo. But the soft, chiding, "hush, now," that follows can't be anyone else.

"Coming," he calls--or he would, if the cold hadn't sapped the strength from his voice, and it only gets worse when he disentangles himself from all the blankets and furs and feels the air bite at his skin. He shudders, swearing an oath under his breath, and refuses to part with the last cumbersome layer as he fumbles his way towards the door. It takes a moment for him to flip the latch with such cold fingers, but when he finally manages it, he pushes the door open enough to quickly beckon Dain inside.

"In," he whispers hastily, "before what's left of the heat escapes." From his nest of blankets, Alvi watches the pair of them with suspicious black eyes.

A flood of relief, quickly subsumed by even deeper concern. Tuo does not sound well, nor does he look well when he finally manages to get the door open. What little is visible of his face under the blanket is even paler than usual, and Dain could swear he sees a hint of blue in those lips.

"What heat?" he asks briskly as he slips inside. "You haven't run out of firewood, have you? You know better than that. What's happened?"

It's not the first time Dain wishes he could manipulate fire. A quick solution here might save Tuo's life, especially if he's stubborn enough to forego the warmth in the town hall or the vicarage for his own frigid wagon.

Tuo shuts the door behind Dain as soon as he is within the comparatively less frigid confines of the wagon, enduring the brief lecture with aplomb--or fatigue and exhaustion. It's difficult to tell.

"Damp got into the firewood," he explains, chafing his slender hands together and blowing on them in a futile effort to get the blood circulating through his extremities again. Instinct has him moving towards the warmest point nearby, which just happens to be Dain; he comes to stand near him, looking equal parts confused and tired. "What are you doing here?"

"Checking on you," Dain answers immediately, like that's the most obvious answer in the world. Anything else he might have added to the answer is lost amidst his brief and frankly terrifying assessment of his friend, who looks about to collapse any moment under the weight of the cold.

"Here." Dain pulls Tuo even closer, and folds Tuo's hands into his own, encasing them in as much of his own warmth as he can muster. "You can't stay in here overnight, you'll freeze. Please come back to the chapel with me."

The hands that encase his are warm and calloused, and Tuo curls his fingers around Dain's without thinking, like it's the most natural thing in the world. (It is.) He looks up into his friend's dark eyes and finds that he is much closer than he'd originally realized. (It was always very easy to be drawn into Anja's orbit.)

Some things never change--except for when they do.

It takes him a moment longer than normal to find his voice. "What about Alvi?" He makes himself look away from Dain to where the magpie still sits amid the blankets. "I can't leave him here, he won't survive."

It's not the flat rejection Dain anticipated, which is both a relief and somehow even more worrying. Tuo's hands in his -- they're the slender and steady hands of a crafter, but also much colder and shakier than they should be, and Dain tries not to think about what might have happened if he didn't come, tries not to imagine those hands blue and nearly lifeless. Things would have been alright, he tells himself firmly. Things are going to be alright.

"I'm sure Vervain wouldn't mind having Alvi for one night," Dain answers, sounding much more sure than he actually is. He may need to leverage his authority a little, much as he'd like to avoid it. He breathes out slowly, a plume of warm air over their hands. "And I'll make sure you're both safe until the morning. Come, let's bring as many of those blankets as we can."

"...And I'll make sure you're both safe until the morning. Come, let's bring as many of those blankets as we can."

"Yes," Tuo agrees a little faintly, "that's a good idea," and then he proceeds to disregard the sense of his own words and Dain's instructions, and slips a hand free to touch his friend's cheek. That's about all the warning Dain gets before Tuo leans up to kiss him gently on the mouth. His skin, predictably, is almost too cool to the touch, but could grow comfortably warm if he kept this up for very long.

But he doesn't. Sense reasserts itself like a struck match, and Tuo draws back to look at Dain with very wide eyes for only the briefest of moments, before taking a deer-like step past him to gather up the blankets. "Let me--get Alvi."

Thoughts of being in a rush, or of the necessary steps in stoking a fire back in the vicarage, or of procuring a hot drink, or of anything outside Tuo's hand-crafted Saaristomeren wagon, lose all purchase in Dain's mind for several quiet seconds.

For him, sense doesn't reassert itself with all the immediacy a struck match -- it seeps in much too slowly like water trickling through a crack in a dam.

"That would... be one way to warm up," he manages. Not the most efficient way. Blankets -- Alvi -- did that really happen, or is it the cold confusing his sense of reality? -- Tuo is still dangerously cold and there cannot be room in Dain's mind for anything else. He leaves Alvi to Tuo, because the bird is more likely not to struggle and hurt itself bundled in familiar arms, and Dain grabs what's left, draping the thickest portion of the furs over Tuo's shoulders on their way out.

A cold wind blows from the north as they leave. Dain shields them as best he can, holding Tuo close, as much to keep track of how hard he's shivering as to keep him warm. If there are other reasons, he'll... look more closely at them once they're out of the cold.

Even having one the magpie's trust when he was hardly more than a fledgling, there is still only so much Tuo can do to calm the frightened bird's squawking and flapping as he tries to swaddle them both in protective layers of blankets. It was an easier thing to do before Dain showed up--before Tuo could hear his own pulse racing in his ears, quick as a bird's. Still, he manages eventually, and allows himself to be escorted out into the bitter cold with his face pressed into the side of Dain's neck, Alvi held securely to his chest.

(He tries valiantly not to think of his home, unattended and isolated, so near an encampment of hot-blooded soldiers.)

At some point, he forces himself to squint against the wind and glimpses the silhouette of the vicarage ahead of them in the dark. "Thank the Night," he says without thinking--oh irony of ironies, and quickens his pace to reach the promise of warmth.

Though most of the vicarage is dark, its residents both temporary and permanent bedded down for the night, there is--perhaps absurdly--a single candle lantern burning outside the sanctuary door, defying Night and wind alike.

Similarly defiant is the person of the interim vicar, bundled to his blindfold and making his careful way to the chapel with firewood under one arm. Some helpful soul had strung guide cords between the buildings and while he doesn't strictly need them to find his way around, the footing's precarious in places and he's been saved from breaking his neck a time or two by having a rope to clutch at.

Pure happy coincidence, really, that he's just barely in earshot of Tuo's exclamation. ...And that the really stupid (but warm!) hat he's wearing muffles it almost to inaudibility. "Someone there?" Ver calls out, freeing a hand to push the hat off his ears. ...oh, gods, that was a mistake.

Dain tenses with Tuo's words, no matter how much he shares in the sentiment -- and then tenses even further when those words are answered, and by the last person he can claim any sort of ignorance to.

In his experience, the best reaction is no reaction at all. Act as if there's no secret to uncover, and most people will question their own senses.

"Vervain," he calls out, "it's Dain. I'm glad you're here, I have someone in dire need of the warmth inside. Are you able to get the door?"

"Vervain?" That name is enough to chase some of the haze of fatigue from his thoughts. Tuo lifts his head and frees one of his hands from the protective layer of blankets and shields his eyes from the wind, looking through the dark towards the priest. hello frend c:

Despite wind and weather and freezing ears, Vervain notably brightens to hear his name in Tuo's voice. "Tuo!" hi buddy!!

...Then what Dain's said catches up with him. "--oh, Earth bless us, yes; please bring him in--" He hastens for the chapel door faster than is really safe; but the gods loving fools as they do, he manages not to bite it. He drops the firewood unceremoniously in the general direction of "away from the door" so he can apply both hands and a shoulder to the task, not so much because of the wind but because, well.

There's at least one sleeping body on the other side of it, who grumbles and moves over when stuck in the ribs. "Sorry, Fredo, but we've got one more for the night, if you'll just roll out of the way--there's a good man..."

They know each other; that's a surprise. Not a bad surprise, given what Dain knows of the other two, but unexpected enough that he stumbles a little as he and Tuo make their way towards Vervain and the door.

Perhaps he'll wait to ask until they're all settled.

Once inside, the warmth is palpable, driven by a strategic fire and the body heat of everyone sleeping in various spots around the room. Even so, Dain doesn't try to remove any of the blankets Tuo's bundled in while he guides them over to some spare room in the far corner, stepping carefully over bodies where it can't be avoided. When they're there, he spares Vervain a grateful smile. "Thank you."

The spare room is probably the vestry--or the vicar's office--and as such it is fastidiously neat and tidy. Or it was, before a shepherd, a ~~heretic~~ puppeteer, and a priest walked into it with a stressed magpie. The bird announces itself with a series of sharp squawks that no doubt rouse anyone not yet awake in the sanctuary, and manages to wriggle free of Tuo's arms. With a few flaps of its wings that scatter feathers all across the vicar's desk, Alvi flits directly up to one of the support beams that crosses beneath the ceiling and settles there, turning to glower down at the three humans below him--especially his person, what a betrayal--with reproachful corvid eyes.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," Tuo snaps at him in a whisper, picking a few errant feathers out of the hair tugged free of his scarf by the wind. "Better a brisk walk here in the cold than our freezing to death overnight. Pardon his manners," this said to both Dain and Vervain with an artless gesture. "He would be appreciative, if he could understand."

Before Ver can reply to the thanks--before he can demure, really; it's only his duty after all to see everyone in and safe and sheltered from the cold--he's interrupted by Alvi's dramatic escape. That it's wreaked total disorder on the vicar's office would probably have escaped the young priest's notice if a feather hadn't ended up in his open mouth. He sputters and paws it from his face with a laugh and a half-despairing "oh, no".

"That's done it for having everything tidy when the vicar returns," he pronounces, without even the least bit of recrimination. "But all's forgiven; I'm as glad neither of you've frozen solid. And if it would be any consolation to him, I've got some wormy acorns with his name on them back in the stores. What do you say?"

That last's addressed to the ceiling, even if it's with no reason to believe he'd be understood by magpie; being good with animals is all in the tone, and...well, approaching them at the right time, which now isn't. Still, having made mention of the treat he'll definitely go get it once all's said and done; not any other use for spoiled nuts but to give them to the birds anyhow.

But that's for later. Recollecting that he's been thanked, Vervain returns his attention to the human occupants of the room with a pleasant smile for the direction he's facing. Maybe sort of Dainward. "Of course, shepherd! Can't leave anyone out to freeze in the cold. Nothing's the matter with your wagon, is it, Tuo?"

Are magpies meant to lose that many feathers? Tuo doesn't seem concerned, so it's likely everything's alright -- minus the mess, but that consideration takes a backseat in Dain's mind. Unless the vicar returns first thing in the morning, there'll be time enough for him to clean up that desk.

He makes a slow start to it now, gathering up those feathers within easy reach, keeping a wary eye skyward where Alvi sits pouting, and leaving Tuo and Vervain to their questions.

Alvi is intelligent enough to recognize when he is being addressed, and so as Vervain speaks at him, he peers right back down at the priest and appears unmoved. For the foreseeable future, this is where he will remain.

"Let him sulk," Tuo tells Verain wryly, "he will be delighted by those acorns on the morrow," but his eyes discreetly follow Dain as he moves around the vicar's office carefully collecting those feathers. Unless Dain should look his way, of course, at which point Tuo's attention is reserved exclusively for the blind priest before him.

"Nothing's the matter with your wagon, is it, Tuo?"

"No, no--damp got into the firewood. My own carelessness, unfortunately." He does his best, for the moment, not to let his sudden anxiety about his little home creep into his voice. Should the wrong set of eyes catch a glimpse of the engravings on the wood panels... well.

"Then they'll be out for him by matins," Ver declares, and that is that.

His expression falls at Tuo's explanation; there's a too-common winter hazard, one Ver well knows could've left him short a friend. "Earth's bones, that's bad luck. Well--you're welcome to stay here as long as you like," though he's a suspicion Tuo might not be most comfortable in the chapel--especially once the vicar returned.

Although with a Shepherd already in the room, the vicar could hardly make things more tense. ...Speaking of anxiety. Ver, of course, has not seem the panels nor does he know quite how deep Tuo's, ah, doctrinal departures go, but he had been around for enough of those arguments between his friend and his Gram to...worry, a little.

He tips his head toward the sound of Dain, before sidling unsubtly toward Tuo. Asks, quietly as he can: "You two are getting on all right?" Subterfuge really doesn't come easy, or at all, to him; but bless his heart, he's trying.

Edited 2020-01-17 08:03 (UTC)

Oh, under other circumstances, he would find Vervain's efforts at subterfuge adorable. (Maybe he manages even a little of it, right now.) But now, that innocent inquiry, "You two are getting on all right?" just makes him flush with colour, his pulse racing again. What had he been thinking, acting so brashly? And why had he done such a thing in the first place?

His eyes dart to Dain and then just as quickly away, and he adopts a light smile that he hopes reaches his voice. "Not to worry," he assures Vervain in a softer voice, even going so far as to gently touch the priest's arm for emphasis. "He and I share a homeland. That can put many other differences in perspective."

He's not trying to eavesdrop. He's very specifically trying not to eavesdrop. It's simply that, in this instance, he would need to be deaf.

It's a little worrying, actually, what they're talking about. The hushed conversation implies that Vervain knows there's a reason Tuo wouldn't get on well with a shepherd, and Tuo's reply is quietly alarming. Does Vervain know where that homeland is? Does someone directly associated with the church now know where Dain comes from?

He wants to trust Tuo's judgement, but against a decade of caution, that desire rings disturbingly hollow.

"I take it you two have met before," Dain says, looking up from his somewhat fruitless feather-gathering task. Maybe he heard their conversation, maybe he didn't, but he certainly doesn't feel strongly about anything in it, if his idly curious tone is anything to go by.

Could Vervain but do it, he'd look comically between Tuo and Dain at the former's reassurance. A Shepherd? From whatever strange far-flung place Tuo had come from?? It beggars the imagination--but gods knew stranger things had happened. When you lived by Turn, stranger things could always happen.

"He's all right, then," Ver assesses, and armed with Tuo's reassurance--and a good thick coat of small-town shamelessness--he doesn't appear the least bit worried at the possibility he'd been overheard when he raises his voice to respond to Dain.

So bad at subterfuge.

"Tuo used to visit us out in 'Thwaite, when I was a kid. He got on with most everyone--even Gram, and Gram's our parson." See?? He has TWO clergy who think he's Just Fine. Two clergy and a Shepherd.

Tuo regards Vervain with exceptional fondness as he recounts the time he spent near 'Thwaite all those years ago, and scoffs softly when he mentions the parson. "I imagine I tried her patience," he says dryly, then shifts his gaze towards Dain. It's impossible for him to truly offer his friend the reassurances he doubtless deserves, but he tries to convey as much as he can through his eyes--that he did not disclose the Night's secrets, nor anything about Saaristemori that would matter, to either the boy or his grandmother.

It's debatable how successful he is.

"Well, as he won't be coming down anytime soon," he goes on, gesturing up to the magpie, "shall I go make myself comfortable in the sanctuary?" He does not relish losing his privacy for the night, but he's resigned himself to it.

Tuo may not be able to put words into his gaze, but the very fact he gives Dain any sort of look communicates well enough. It's all right, that look says. I trust him. Evidently not far enough to speak freely in front of him -- which is oddly reassuring. Tuo's trust is not a thing so easily won, without common ground, and Tuo's obvious fondness for Vervain puts a warm smile on Dain's face. It's good to know his friend continued delighting others during his travels, trying the patience of families everywhere -- that he didn't enforce loneliness on himself.

Dain resolves to talk more with Vervain later. An open-minded acolyte of the church is perhaps not quite safe, but he can't say he's not intrigued.

"There should still be some room left," Dain muses, glancing up at Alvi in the rafters. "But if you don't want him to think you're abandoning him..." He really knows nothing about birds. Or about how the vicar would feel if someone human slept back here.

Ver, dear blind thing he is, remains utterly oblivious to the silent conversation going on around him; he's lost instead in considering the practical logistics of where Tuo's going to sleep. (And what to do with a stubborn magpie occupying the vicar's office.)

"He's not perched above anything important, is he?" he asks suddenly. "Nothing we can't clean if he messes on it?" Birds, man.

"And there's only space in the sanctuary if you'd like to be closer'n the gods ever intended to Bert." A man who smelled like that no matter what he did was absolute if alarming proof of Divinity at work in men's lives. "You stay here; I'll fetch a blanket."

Civil Blood

I. News from the West

II. Cold Snap

III. A Howl in the Night

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